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Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

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Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#121

Post by adastra22 »

kelipso wrote: post #53
adastra22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making the same mistake OP is calling out. As far as I can tell “generating context” is exactly what human reasoning is too. Consider the phrase “let’s reason this out” where you then explore all options in detail, before pronouncing your judgement. Feels exactly like what the AI reasoner is doing.

No, people make logical connections, make inferences, make sure all of it fits together without logical errors, etc.

How do they do that? Specifically, how? Moment by moment what does that look like? Usually it involves e.g. making a statement and “noticing” a contradiction in that statement. Very similar to how an LLM reasons.

I think a lot of people here think people reason like a mathematical theorem prover, like some sort of platonic ideal rationalist. That’s not how real brains work though.

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#122

Post by AbrahamParangi »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #75

> The first is that reasoning probably requires language use. Even if you don’t think AI models can “really” reason - more on that later - even simulated reasoning has to be reasoning in human language. That is an unreasonable assumption. In case of LLMs it seems wasteful to transform a point from latent space into a random token and lose information. In fact, I think in near future it will be the norm for MLLMs to "…

You're not allowed to say that it's not reasoning without distinguishing what is reasoning. Absent a strict definition that the models fail and that some other reasoner passes, it is entirely philosophical.

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#124

Post by adastra22 »

viccis wrote: post #68
adastra22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making the same mistake OP is calling out. As far as I can tell “generating context” is exactly what human reasoning is too. Consider the phrase “let’s reason this out” where you then explore all options in detail, before pronouncing your judgement. Feels exactly like what the AI reasoner is doing.

>As far as I can tell “generating context” is exactly what human reasoning is too. This was the view of Hume (humans as bundles of experience who just collect information and make educated guesses for everything). Unfortunately, it leads to philosophical skepticism, in which you can't ground any knowledge absolutely, as it's all just justified by some knowledge you got from someone else, which also came from someone…

FYI this posts comes off as incredibly pretentious. You think we haven’t read the same philosophy?

This isn’t about epistemology. We are talking about psychology. What does your brain do when we “reason things out”? Not “can we know anything anyway?” Or “what is the correlation between the map and the territory?” Nor anything like that. Just “what is your brain doing when you think you are reasoning?” And “is what an LLM does comparable?

Philosophy doesn’t have answers for questions of applied psychology.

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#125

Post by adastra22 »

phailhaus wrote: post #55
double0jimb0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly what language/paradigm is this brain modeling the problem within?

We literally don't know. We don't understand how the brain stores concepts. It's not necessarily language: there are people that do not have an internal monologue, and yet they are still capable of higher level thinking.

I am one of those for what it’s worth. I struggle to put my thoughts into words, as it does not come naturally to me. When I think internally, I do not use language at all, a lot of of the time.

Drive my wife crazy as my answer to her questions are always really slow and considered. I have the first think what thought I want to convey, and then think “how do I translate this into words?”

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#126

Post by adastra22 »

mdp2021 wrote: post #46
adastra22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making the same mistake OP is calling out. As far as I can tell “generating context” is exactly what human reasoning is too. Consider the phrase “let’s reason this out” where you then explore all options in detail, before pronouncing your judgement. Feels exactly like what the AI reasoner is doing.

But a big point here becomes whether the generated "context" then receives proper processing.

What processing? When you have an internal line of thought, what processing do you do on it?

For me, it feels like I say something, and in saying it, and putting it into words, I have a feeling about whether it is true and supported or not. A qualitative gauge of its correctness. A lot of my reasoning is done this way, trusting that these feelings are based off of a lifetime experience of accumulated facts and the another things currently being considered.

Explain to me how this is different than a neural net outputting a weight for the truthiness of the state space vector?

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#127

Post by adastra22 »

slashdave wrote: post #48
adastra22 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making the same mistake OP is calling out. As far as I can tell “generating context” is exactly what human reasoning is too. Consider the phrase “let’s reason this out” where you then explore all options in detail, before pronouncing your judgement. Feels exactly like what the AI reasoner is doing.

Perhaps we can find some objective means to decide, rather than go with what "feels" correct

That’s not how our brains work though, or how must examples of human reasoning play out. When asking “do LLMs reason” we are asking whether the action being performed is similar to regular humans, not some platonic ideal of a scientist/rationalist.

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#128

Post by jojobas »

vmg12 wrote: post #82
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #75

> The first is that reasoning probably requires language use. Even if you don’t think AI models can “really” reason - more on that later - even simulated reasoning has to be reasoning in human language. That is an unreasonable assumption. In case of LLMs it seems wasteful to transform a point from latent space into a random token and lose information. In fact, I think in near future it will be the norm for MLLMs to "…

Solutions to some of the hardest problems I've had have only come after a night of sleep or when I'm out on a walk and I'm not even thinking about the problem. Maybe what my brain was doing was something different from reasoning?

At the very least intermediate points of one's reasoning are grounded in reality.

Re: Is chain-of-thought AI reasoning a mirage?

#130

Post by esafak »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #75

> The first is that reasoning probably requires language use. Even if you don’t think AI models can “really” reason - more on that later - even simulated reasoning has to be reasoning in human language. That is an unreasonable assumption. In case of LLMs it seems wasteful to transform a point from latent space into a random token and lose information. In fact, I think in near future it will be the norm for MLLMs to "…

It is not obvious that a continuous space is better for thinking than a discrete one.
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